


(doubt thou) The Stars Are Fire

by wastrelwoods



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare, SHAKESPEARE William - Works
Genre: And Actual Suicide, And Everyone Can Eat and be Happy, Dark Themes Because Have You Read This Play, F/M, Horatio Just Wants To Make A Cake Full of Rainbows and Smiles, Multi, Polyamory, Suicidal Thoughts, Warning: Ignores Chronological Order, overtones of incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-30
Updated: 2013-12-30
Packaged: 2018-01-06 18:08:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 30
Words: 1,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1109953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wastrelwoods/pseuds/wastrelwoods
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A study in brevity. Thirty one-word prompts. Three-sentence ficlets based on each.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a nerd. Whatever. Enjoy.

Hamlet is a silent child, pale and solemn at his own christening, like he knows the eyes of a nation follow him. Horatio watches, as do his king and queen and the uneasy priest who baptizes the newborn prince. Unnoticed, Claudius watches Gertrude.


	2. Accusation

He wastes so many moments imagining how he'll say the words when the time comes, and finds his gaze lingering long after his Uncle-Father-King turns away, gauging guilt in every tap of his fingers on the throne and every private smile meant for Gertrude's eyes alone. The waiting drives him mad, and the doubt drives him still madder. "You do not know moderation, when you think," Horatio chides gently.


	3. Restless

Sleeplessness first drives him to steal a glance at the letter under Guildenstern's pillow, and so he supposes his incessant waking can be thanked on some level. He dreams dreams of cold water closing over a faceless figure, his father, his mother, his lover, his friend. They, Hamlet resigns as he splits apart the wax seal of his treacherous, sick house, know the truest way to find rest, whomever they may be.


	4. Snowflake

Many years have passed since Horatio last laid eyes on Elsinore, and months since he saw his prince, but he finds that, at least, the snow remains the same. White flecks dance on the breeze, numbing his fingers and staining his cheeks with colour. A change is in the air, he realizes, with a cursory glance at the greying sky; winter is on its way.


	5. Haze

Midnight must have struck, and yet the feast is still in full swing. The pleasant blur that his senses have dulled to numbs him almost enough to forget. Claudius lifts the goblet to his lips again, meeting Gertrude's stunning eyes and he realizes for the first time that she already knows.


	6. Flame

Laertes lights a candle for his sister. From the balcony below, Hamlet watches it flicker, a single point of light in a vast vacuum of cold, dark space, and an almost hilariously futile venture. Smiling bitterly, he lights one as well.


	7. Formal

"Well, Horatio, how do I look?" 

He knows his eyes are too wide, perhaps comically so, but there are few possible responses to the resplendent, almost breathtaking sight, and he feels as though he could look forever. "Like a king, my lord." 


	8. Companion

There is silence in the prattling courtier's wake, a few more short, peaceful moments. Hamlet's skin is pale, his eyes bruised, his fingers tapping out an unsteady countdown against the stone. With a sigh, Horatio winds his fingers through his prince's, stilling the trembling beat, and leans in to press a chaste kiss against Hamlet's temple.


	9. Move

Always, he has been contemplative and slow to action. It is what drives Hamlet's mind to ragged ruin, this steady overworking in the quest to know more, understand more. But now, he is anything but predictable as he spins on his heel to drive his sword through the tapestry with a deadly fire in his eyes, and Gertrude knows that her son has truly lost all reason.


	10. Silver

It was the color of the band that encircled his head when the earth swallowed him, already beginning to rust beneath Horatio's feet. It was the color of his prince's eyes, like the sky on a cloudy day, like the truest skies of Denmark. And it is the color of the rain that washed the sides of Elsinore clean, though the rivers ran red, more enriched with royal blood than a hall of kings could ever hope to be.


	11. Prepared

It seems, amusingly enough, like the most important moment of her entire life. Every step she takes is carefully planned, every shiver a setback and a reminder of the humanity she does not care to feel any longer. She must be colder than the water, Ophelia judges, clutching the flowers tighter as she takes another step.


	12. Knowledge

Horatio asks him why he tarries so long. "I must be absolutely certain," Hamlet drawls, with an esoteric turn of his lips. Later, he realizes that it meant, even then, he knew that he could never be certain enough.


	13. Denial

When she shares Claudius' kisses, they taste innocent enough on her tongue, she thinks, and kisses him deeper to block out the doubts. The odds pile against her husband, circumstance and brooding looks and the way that she forgets that he is not his brother when she closes her eyes. But Gertrude does what she can to forget, does her best not to feel the blood on his hands when he holds her.


	14. Wind

He supposes that this is what people mean by a gentle sea breeze. The cold does not touch him, if cold there is-- Rosencrantz claims it is a southerly breeze, but he has not trusted Rosencrantz for a long time now. He wonders if it is only his imagination that he can smell blood in the airs that blow him toward England.


	15. Order

"What say you, Horatio? Perhaps I should to a nunnery," Ophelia murmurs, later that night. He shakes his head half in fondness and half in exasperated worry for their absent lover, his kisses warm but strangely hollow without Hamlet's fingers carding through her hair; still, she can almost pretend it is enough.


	16. Thanks

The deed is done, he thinks, smiling with bloody lips. All ghosts are appeased, and the fog gathering in his vision is the calmest Hamlet has ever known. Laertes did what he could not, prompting him to action and sending him this thrice-blessed silence. 


	17. Look

At first, he sees something not unlike fear flicker in the King's eyes-- dark, nothing like the unnerving clear irises of his nephew. Then, rage twists his face, a sneer on his lips and his fingers bone-white where they grip the chair. Horatio watches him sweep from the room in cold silence, and wonders what the hell Hamlet had asked him to witness.


	18. Summer

Hamlet fell in love with Ophelia so long ago that it felt as though they had always been. Some day in June, he recalls, with her hair golden in the sun and her feet bare on the grass. He fell in love with Horatio much the same way, with a force that crept up on him with the turn of the seasons, and Horatio had an open heart and an easy smile that kept the three of them burning long after winter's chill set in.


	19. Transformation

The strangest part of madness was that it turned its victims almost hauntingly beautiful, even as it warped their minds beyond recognition. She was lovely even with her eyes sunken in and her fine bones showing through her white skin, and she remained lovely as water dripped from the ends of her hair. Never had a more bewitching corpse been made, Gertrude thought as the dirt fell through her fingers.


	20. Tremble

Hamlet shakes as they make their way down from the watchtower, all smiles and waves and pretense. He does not stop shaking, even when he takes comfort in Horatio's arms, when he trembles so hard it feels like he will shatter into a million shards. "Do you think it was really him?" he whispers, and Horatio does not need to ask what he means. 


	21. Sunset

Marcellus waits. The sun sets redder than it had the night before, and rises pale as a corpse. The ghost does not return.


	22. Mad

They tell her that Hamlet is insane, that the lines of grief etched in the corners of his mouth are unnatural because their own were nothing more than a polite show. He snaps and snarls at her, and Ophelia knows that she deserves every word of it, that allowing her father to use her so was an act of weakness. But she has always been weak, where he is concerned, because love makes you weak, especially when it is undeserved.


	23. Thousand

Nine hundred and ninety nine days he spends at Wittenberg. Near three years of thoughts that he knows he will have to forget to return home and to be the prince his father wants him to become, better at manipulating treaties than writing treatises. 

On the thousandth day, a letter arrives from his uncle, Claudius.


	24. Outside

Polonius chuckles softly to himself, shifting his weight. It might surprise some people, how much can be overheard with just a little effort and a glass pressed to the ear and Elsinore's thin walls. Oh, he grins, shuffling behind the curtain with an overwhelming glee, the things that these old ears have heard.


	25. Winter

A mound of packed snow strikes the back of his head, dripping down his neck. Hamlet whirls around, uncertain, and sees Horatio leaning against the gate with an innocent expression. "I could have you arrested, remember?" he warns, and is caught off guard when Ophelia's second snowball catches him in the stomach so hard he collapses into a bank.


	26. Diamond

It sits innocently in the bottom of the goblet, the reflection in the glass like a pattern of cracks on a broken window. Gertrude remembers the jewel well, a gift from her first husband, now ready to pass on to her son. It's odd, she thinks, how the tint of the wine stains the pure white gem to a fine ruby red.


	27. Letters

Frowning at something on the paper in his hand, England eyes the pair warily. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern do not know what message the King had scribbled so hurriedly for their missive, but they know that it cannot bode well for their primary passenger, even in his absence. "Execute them," the monarch calls, and they share a glance of common confusion before realization sets in, "By order of Prince Hamlet."


	28. Promise

Surreal does not begin to cover the situation, their somber crown prince bellowing at them as the ghost of his father echoes the word. "Swear," Hamlet hisses again, his eyes wild and so pale that they seem almost white. It is but an oath of secrecy to Marcellus, but Horatio knows that he is swearing to do anything and everything in his power to help; it is an oath that he has made a dozen times before, and he will do so again without hesitation.


	29. Simple

He lets himself rail against his mother, accusations of falsehood and promiscuity because he doesn't understand. He does not know why she would marry the brother of the man she truly wanted for any reason beyond wanting too much. "We are alike in that respect, you and I," Gertrude says with a wistful smile, not denying it, and he thinks of how he sleeps curled up with Ophelia on his left and Horatio on his right, and admits that it may be simpler than it seems.


	30. Future

It takes many years before he gathers the strength to return to Elsinore. Indeed, Horatio has become an old man by anyone's standards, having spent years turning outliving those he loves into a fine art, and telling the story he promised long ago to tell. He has been a faithful disciple, Horatio thinks, bending to lift a handful of the new-fallen snow and watch the crystals slip between his weathered fingers; it is time to come home at last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, sadder than expected. Well, not especially. Have you read this play, because this is basically Disneyland in comparison.


End file.
